Food drops hurt aid, church agency says

Christian Century, Oct 24, 2001 by Laurie Spurr

A coalition of church relief agencies has criticized the humanitarian airdrops accompanying U.S.-led military strikes in Afghanistan, saying they compromise other aid efforts in the region. The network called Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, based in Geneva, Switzerland, called the drops of food packages from military planes "ineffective" and even potentially "dangerous" for the civilian population.

The airdrops were "jeopardizing the credibility of humanitarian aid in the region and were not an effective means of meeting the desperate needs of the people of Afghanistan," said Thor-Arne Prois, director of ACT'S coordinating office, in an October 15 statement. The airdrops violate basic tenets of giving aid such as the need for neutrality and impartiality, he said.

"Simultaneous airstrikes and airdrops constitute a total confusion of humanitarian and military actions," Prois said. Future relief efforts could be delayed or blocked if this confusion led Afghan authorities to question the agencies' neutrality.

Pilots dropping food packets had no way of ensuring that they reached the needy, said Prois, who for four years worked in Afghanistan as a representative of Norwegian Church Aid, one of ACT's member organizations. In addition, people could be injured if they tried to gather food that has fallen on mined fields. "At best these airdrops are a symbolic gesture," Prois said.

Rainer Lang, ACT press officer, said that while some people were eating food from the airdropped packages, others were burning the packages because they thought the food was poisoned, according to refugees. "Everybody knows people need long-term aid to get through the winter," Lang said in a phone interview from Peshawar in Pakistan. "Even if they could airdrop 100,000 [packages] daily, it would not be enough."

With neighboring borders officially closed to Afghan refugees, getting humanitarian aid into the country by road has been haphazard. However, a convoy of lorries from Church World Service--a U.S. ecumenical agency working in ACT--on October 16 passed the border at Quetta carrying 500 shelter kits for central Afghanistan where people have fled to escape the air attacks in the cities. It was the second such shipment in two days. Eight CWS lorries had been stuck at the border for a week.

CWS and other ACT members working with local partners have moved substantial food and supplies to border areas in Iran, Tajikistan and Pakistan.